Everton 1 – 0 United

When within 90 minutes of the start of the campaign we’re having “SHOCK OF THE SEASON” shoved down our throats, the depressing inevitability of Football eventually eating itself crowns on the horizon. Oh Sky! With your patronising repetitive dirge ridden attempts to ingeniously trick us into chucking more money at you, you really spoil us.

Aaaanyway … the game was alright. I’m generally an optimist (you may have noticed I only ever predict wins. Maybe I’m just deluded), so tend to think back to how we got on at Goodison last year; we won. Then I think, okay what about at Old Trafford? We drew. SOOO, if we beat Everton at Old Trafford this year, we’ll only be one point worse off AND we can easily pick that up elsewhere (at the very least against City at home). Now doesn’t that make us all feel better?! Hhhhhmmmmm…

It was Fellaini, who I’ve said many times would be a great asset to any club, that did the hurting. Not just with the goal, but with his general “PERFORMANCE OF THE SEASON” display. He would have been hard to contain, with the first choice in defence (if such a thing exists), let alone with, well, what we had. I thought Michael Carrick actually looked pretty confident (a good sign for the season) and Vidic, looked like Vidic, only someone had replaced his body with that of a child; he was also desperately in need of match sharpness (other cliches available). I’ve given up talking about T.V at RB, it just makes me sad and I love Evra too much to bring him into this. The star of the defence – without doubt – was De Gea. Still not the finished article by any means (of course), but his shot-stopping ability is almost unrivaled.

Up top there were a few promising signs of what could be. Rooney and Welbeck though (maybe feeling the weight of Van Persie on the bench) struggled to really get going (again, first game). Nani did his best impression of himself, and sterling it was too. With T.V on the right of midfield, I’m sure things would have worked out differently (pure speculation). Cleverly and Scholesy weren’t awful and were finding passing angles, but things weren’t quite clicking. When Van Persie came on (How surreal was it seeing him on the bench??!) we’d all but abandoned playing nicely and so he was left to come searching for the ball. Still the sense of quality oozing from him was palpable.

There is one player I have intentionally omitted from mentioning to this point … Kagawa(wawa)! I THINK HE LOOKS AMAZING!!!!! He makes me feel like this:

Call me old fashioned, but I still, despite the occasional exception, see us as slow starters. I’ve seen a lot worse.